Big Mitch dares to call it treason.

On November 25, 2005, I wrote an article that friends criticized for intemperance of language. You can see it here and judge for yourself. In the article, I quoted from Dick Cheney's September 14, 2003 appearance on Meet the Press:

I don’t know Joe Wilson. I’ve never met Joe Wilson. A question had arisen. I’d heard a report that the Iraqis had been trying to acquire uranium in Africa, Niger in particular. I get a daily brief on my own each day before I meet with the president to go through the intel. And I ask lots of question. One of the questions I asked at that particular time about this, I said, “What do we know about this?” They take the question. He came back within a day or two and said, “This is all we know. There’s a lot we don’t know,” end of statement. And Joe Wilson—I don’t who sent Joe Wilson. He never submitted a report -- that I ever saw -- when he came back.

As I said at the time, “Oh Dick, your pants are on fire. Of course you didn’t see his report – it was oral! And you know that this is standard operating procedure for the CIA, too. Go back to your undisclosed location, and think about the fact that America is on to you, you lying bastard.” [Note: that was not the intemperate part.]

Why am I revisiting my indiscretions now? Well, just today, Murray Waas wrote in the National Journal:

Vice President Dick Cheney directed his then-chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on July 12, 2003 to leak to the media portions of a then-highly classified CIA report that Cheney hoped would undermine the credibility of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, a critic of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, according to Libby's grand jury testimony in the CIA leak case and sources who have read the classified report.

The March 2002 intelligence report was a debriefing of Wilson by the CIA's Directorate of Operations after Wilson returned from a CIA-sponsored mission to Niger to investigate claims, later proved to be unfounded, that Saddam Hussein had attempted to procure uranium from the African nation, according to government records.

A few hours after Cheney instructed Libby to disclose information from the CIA report, Libby called then-New York Timesreporter Judith Miller and Time magazine correspondent Matthew Cooper and blew the cover of a CIA agent, thereby endangering the lives of anyone with whom she was known to work.

Incidentally, she was working on Iran’s nuclear weapons program, but that’s a different story.

I highly recommend that you read Murray Waas’ article which can be found here, but the main point is simply this: “There is a growing body of information showing that at the time Plame was outed the vice president was deeply involved in the effort to undermine her husband.”

I probably should not have called the Vice President of the United States a lying sack of shit, and I thank my friends for reining in my anger. I should have just called him a traitor.

“… and tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!”